Posted
by
timothy
on Tuesday June 05, 2001 @06:26PM
from the appropriate-gestures dept.

Jess writes: "Ed Hall, known for his cool maps that pinpoint GPS treasure hunt locations was recently threatened with legal action from Geocaching.com. Geocaching.com told Ed that he must comply with their "requests to put copyright notices on all geocaching data". Ed had to bring his site down for one week while he sought legal advice to determine if gps locations can be copyrighted. His lawyers told him everything is legitimate and his maps are back up! I don't think this fight is over yet but it will be interesting to see if gps location information can be copyrighted." This redoubles my current ambition to find an inexpensive, decent GPS receiver. Then I can copyright everywhere I go and charge royalties for visiting.

I can't copyright the words I use to create a document, but the document itself is copyrightable.

While GPS positions can not be copyrighted, I suspect that a file containing specific GPS data arranged in a meaningful way can be.

So, if I write down specific directions on how to find a location, it doesn't matter whether or not it's in English, Deutsch, hexed ASCII, or any other notation -- those specific directions are copyrighted. You can't copy it without my permission (at least, not within the jurisdiction of the United States).

However, if you read it, take notes, and jot down your own interpretation, I can't do a damn thing about what you do with it.

Now, lets pretend I spend n million dollars surveying a location, so that I can sell the survey information to people who want to do something with it (drill for oil, lay cables, whatever). All the information I gather from my survey will be considered private intellectual property.

If you read it and jot down a summary to distribute to your friends without my permission, I can sue your pants off for infringing on my property rights.

On the other hand, if you and a bunch of your friends wander around my surveyed area and collected your own data after hearing I did a survey, I am again unable to do anything to stop you from distributing it.

The legal issues here are not about land ownership or the exclusive rights to a location denoted by a set of numbers -- it's about the set of numbers, and how they were obtained. If it can be shown that our friend obtained the data inquestion from the company without permission, and that the data was obtained by the company at a substantial cost and is directly used to it's business, then our friend may end up in trouble.

Otherwise, I suspect it's just another case of the big guy trying to put the squeeze on the little guy who can't afford to be squeezed.

I think the reasons behind geocaching.com trying to assert some control over the data are mostly harmless. Basically, sometimes landowners want to have references to a cache deleted when it becomes a problem with too many people hiking in and the problems that result from overuse of a natural area.

If geocaching.com lets anyone slurp up their data, who insures that whoever slurps it doesn't keep the cache deletions current? Sure, if you post data on geocaching.com you can post it anywhere else too, but it isn't geocaching.com's fault that the data wasn't "contained" in that case.

I think they're trying to protect themselves by being able to say "If you contact us about a problem cache, we will remove it." and not having to worry about contacting many websites about the change. I think it is perfectly reasonable, and in the long run will probably help protect our natural environment.

Perhaps "copyright" per se isn't the right way to go about it, but I can appreciate geocaching.com's dilemma.

First of all, let me apologize for the length of this message. I've gotten
so many "what's going on with the maps?" emails, that I figured this was the
easiest way to bring everyone up to date with regards to the status. If you
can manage to slog through the following emails, you will know as much as I
do about the situation between Mr. Irish and myself.

I've included all the email back and forth between Mr. Irish and myself
since this all began last Thursday morning. These are the complete and
unedited emails, the only thing I've done is to place the emails in
chronological order for ease in reading. I've placed my comments [[[inside
square brackets]]] when needed.

In addition, I need to have you provide an addtional copyright message on
your maps and web pages as follows -

"Geocaching Data Copyright 2001 Grounded, Inc."

Thanks,

Jeremy

- - - - -
[[[I didn't respond to this email for reasons I'll make clear below. The
next morning the very cool "Project A.P.E." promotion with 20th Century Fox
appeared on Mr. Irish's web page. Fortunately for me, it was placed only
about 40 miles from where I live. I juggled my schedule at work and headed
out mid-day with a friend of mine. I've written up a description of the hunt
on the geocaching discussion boards at
http://forums.groundspeak.com/ubb/Forum11/HTML/0 00 012.html. In short, we had
a blast finding the cache and another cacher that I had known previously
only from emails and logs was there too.

Whatever the case, how did it look? I'm sort of in the dark regarding
contents, etc.

And did you get my email re: the lost caches page and copyright info?

Jeremy

- - - - -

[[[I don't know about you, but I really take umbrage at being called a
cheater -- I don't know any other way to interpret the first paragraph other
than as an accusation of cheating on my part. I wasn't expecting a note of
congratulations or anything, although that would have been a nice gesture,
but really! I've found a bunch of caches in the past, I own a GPS, and the
cache was 40 miles from my house; that's the sum total of my "unfair
advantage". I think the two people with me (one of whom I'd never met
before) when I found the cache would vouch for this.

This was my reply to Mr. Irish. I regret I might have been a bit less civil
than I should have been, but I did do him the courtesy of answer all his
questions.]]]

> Hopefully you didn't have an unfair advantage for finding this cache?

Gee, thanks for the congratulatory message. =P No, I didn't cheat.

> Whatever the case, how did it look? I'm sort of in the dark regarding
> contents, etc.

A very large ammo box, about 6 inches, by 18 inches, by 3 feet long. The
contents were a welcome sheet, a prop from the movie (a very cool looking
spoon), a certificate of authentication, and a camera. Another cacher (Ron
Streeter) got there before Julie and I did, but was searching about 50 feet
away when we found it.

So who did you get to plant the cache? It was a nice spot.

> And did you get my email re: the lost caches page and copyright info?

Yes I did, but without any explanation of why you want me to make changes to
my web page, I really didn't know how to respond. Feedback on both the "Lost
Caches" and "Statistics" page has been very positive--people seem to enjoy
them both.

It seems that by working together we can do better for the sport and the
players than by working at cross-purposes. Don't you agree?

-Ed

- - - - -

[[[And Mr. Irish's response below. I'm not sure what he means by "You do
glean information about new caches before anyone else would." since I get my
information from his web pages just like everyone else does. I have NO
special access to his web site or data files.]]]

Hey, it was a valid question. You do glean information about new caches
before anyone else would. Folks would ask the same question of me if I were
to be the first person to discover a cache planted. I have decided to remove
myself from the cache searches to remain impartial and to keep it fair (I
would be fair, but appearances are everything). As a person who is providing
a service to the game sometimes it's best to at least look impartial. I'm
basically obligated to ask.

By the way, the spoon was designed by Tim Burton, so it's definitely a
collectable (you certainly know that, so I'm stating the obvious).
Congratulations for being the first! Hopefully the cache won't be too cool
that someone may want to take it. I'd hate for that to happen, but it may be
inevitable. Fox did get permission to plant it as well as the other caches,
which is a boon for the sport.

Re: lost caches -

I want to make sure you understand I'm not just being a bad guy about this.
As I explained before, the caches have been archived for many different
reasons, and folks in the past understood that the coordinates would be
stricken from the site. Providing easy access to them may encourage people
to traffic in these locations which is the reason (in many cases) why the
caches were removed in the first place.

Unfortunately I don't have time to explain myself for these requests
(especially re: the lost caches, which I explained before), so it may come
off harsh. For that I apologize. However, I do have the copyright on the
cache collection (one of the only things that I have as part of the work I
do for the site), and am allowing your site to use the information from mine
in order to generate the maps. I do think it's a great service but I also
need you to comply with promises I make to the folks on the geocaching.com
web site.

Thanks. I'd love to see a picture of the spoon if you have a digital camera.

Jeremy

- - - - -

[[[Sometime around this point, Mr. Irish removed the link to my map page
from his web site. I have no problems with this, it's his web page and, of
course, he can link to anyone he likes.

Also somewhere about this time, my access to geocaching.com started going
away in a very interesting way. At first I thought it was just a bug on Mr.
Irish's server (things like all cache names showing up as "Geocache") but
then additional changes started popping up that required deliberate changes
to code started to occur: Things like the cache's state or country info
being displayed as "Planet: Earth" and the cache owner's name being listed
on every cache as "Human". The latitude and longitude of caches was
randomized and the cache logs were just gone. This last part was
particularly frustrating when I got an automated notice that my 'E' Is For
Expedition cache (http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.asp? ID=2577)
had been logged for the first time, but I had no way of knowing if the
person logging it (whoever they were) had found it or not. Thanks to
everyone who emailed me my own cache page on Saturday, it is appreciated!

Another change (that I didn't find out about until later) affected
everybody. All access to all lost cache and their logs was removed. The only
thing left on those pages was a "This cache is gone" notice. Owners couldn't
even read past log entries on their own caches.

Well, these changes had to be deliberate since they did require special code
so I asked Mr. Irish about them below: (And no, I never did manage to get
him that picture of the spoon)]]]

I'll look into the coordinate issues. When do you think you can remove the
lost caches link and add the copyright info?

We should talk about a better way for you to get the data too. Perhaps an
XML file of the waypoints or something similar you can access. I'm working
on a format for another project. Mind parsing XML?

Jeremy

- - - - -

[[[One thing about the above note that I found very interesting is that Mr.
Irish is planning on publishing all caches and their coordinates in XML
format. I sincerely hope this information is made available to
everyone--Lots of cool utilities could be written that would make geocaching
easier for all. And yes, I realize his mentioning of XML for the first time
in months was merely a "carrot" intended to get me to make the changes he
had requested. But it's a start.

Here's my response below. I wrote it in the sincere belief that Mr. Irish
and I could reach some sort of compromise on the two (unrelated in my mind)
requests he had originally made.]]]

Yes it is cool, I'm looking forward to it. Free publicity on a cable channel
seen across the US. Details to follow once we clear up our other issues.

> I'll look into the coordinate issues. When do you think you can remove the
> lost caches link and add the copyright info?

I think we should start talking about the two issues; I'm sure we can work
out a compromise that's acceptable to us both. You need to get the credit
you deserve and I need to not have the feeling someone is telling me what I
can and cannot put on my web site.

> We should talk about a better way for you to get the data too. Perhaps an
> XML file of the waypoints or something similar you can access. I'm working
> on a format for another project. Mind parsing XML?

I think I'm up to parsing XML. Let me know.

- - - - -

[[[I have to say, that Mr. Irish's response below surprised me. I had been
under the impression that his "requests" were just that--something we could
discuss and come up with something that would satisfy us both. Read on...]]]

Apparently you do not respect my requests to remove the lost caches page or
to add my copyright information on your maps and pages.

Please understand there is no sort of compromise. You either remove the lost
caches page and add the copyright information or you do not. I think I fully
explained the reasons why both of these need to occur. If you do not remove
the link and any files relating to the lost caches from your site by the end
of today, I will be forced to take legal action. I'll give you until Monday
to add the copyright information to your web pages as well.

I want to make this clear. Since you are using MY copyrighted data you are
required to do what I say regarding these issues, or remove everything from
your site that contains my collection of data. Content theft is a crime.

This is not meant as a personal attack. I have to respond this way to anyone
who doesn't comply with my requests to make changes that impact the tone of
the game. There are many reasons why I have to protect my copyright, and
many reasons why lost caches need to be removed from your site.

Jeremy

- - - - -

[[[With the "Please understand there is no sort of compromise.", the threat
of legal action, and very short deadlines (on a holiday weekend when no
attorney's were available to me) I had no choice but to remove all data from
my web page.

And this is where we sit today. Except for a terse "Your access is back."
message sent on Sunday, I have not heard from Mr. Irish. I still hope that
he and I can work together for the greater good of the sport of Geocaching.

BTW, the interview went very well yesterday and I'll be sure to publish
information on it when I find out when and where it's airing.

Thanks you for slogging through this entire message! And special thanks to
all those that wrote me emails of support this weekend, it's very much
appreciated.

I seriously disagree with the "21st century arrogant westerner" label. A GPS reciever is only a tool, like a map.

Now, if you are clueless, even a GPS can't help you. Myself, I like a good map, because I almost always know which was in North. When I can convince my GF that we "need" a GPS, I'll get one, and in the mean time I will consider what it's going to do to my mind.

check out the Garmin E-Trex [garmin.com]. Besides the cheezy e-Name, it's got some very cool features. My favorite is it's ability to track your path as you walk, instead of just recording waypoints. It lets you view the path you've taken so far, which is pretty cool. The best part though? You can save that path into memory, and then retrace it. When you have the gps in 'trace' mode, the compass has an arrow on it that follows the path that you've taken. All you have to do is make sure the arrow is pointing forward.:)

Cheaper gps units can only mark waypoints (which this unit can do) but navigating between waypoints can be difficult unless you mark a LOT of them. If there's a mountain between you and that waypoint, you get to figure out how you got around it the first time, instead of just retracing your exact path.

Garmin also sells tons of accesories for their gps units. I currently have a car mount on my e-trex, as well as a cigarette lighter adapter. You can also get a bike mount, which i'm planning on doing if I ever get around to getting that mountain bike.:)

Bonus hacker points: Garmin also sells a RS232 serial cable that you can use to plug the gps unit into a computer. But that's not what's cool about it. You can use garmin's proprietary output format, or choose between about 6 or 7 standard output formats.. one of which is straight ASCII text. No reverse engineering needed.

I got my e-trex for $129 at fry's, but you might be able to find it cheaper online.

Until recently (maybe a year ago) the military introduced timing errors into their signal so that it was impossible to get an exact fix although a ground based unit would increase your percision.
Of course if this story is true it's rediculous.

Why's it rediculous? Selective Availability as it was called buggered with the timing of the satellites. Without a military unit you just couldn't get a perfectly accurate fix on your location. Here [dotrs.gov.au] is some more info. Basically before you couldn't get a within more than about 100 meters with more than 95% confidence. That's been scrapped as of 1 May 2000; now you have accuracies of about 20m, and even better if you go differential GPS. I know that surveyors were especially happy to have SA dissappear.

Copyright is mainly a good thing. After all, If we didn't have copyright, everything we write would be in the public domain. Books would not be sellable, so not as many would get written and published. You couldn't release Linux under GPL. So copyright has good aspects.

The public domain only exists in opposition to "private domain"-- material under copyright. Books would have commercial value, but publishers would probably reap most of the profits. Authors might serve under contract--similar to Hollywood's "studio system," perhaps. The right to read might be governed by contract law. Who knows?

One case for radically restructuring copyright is found in Stephen Breyer, The Uneasy Case for Copyright: A Study of Copyright in Books, Photocopies, and Computer Programs, 84 Harv. L. Rev. 281 (1970).

I'm trying to figure out how the knowledge of where I am (or might be) detracts from the wonder of getting there.
Tell you what. YOU get lost. I'll whip out the GPS and find my way back, thank you.:)
-----------------------------

I went geocaching for the first time this weekend - it was way cool! I personally don't believe in using maps while geocaching though (other than perhaps very rough map on my Magellan MAP 330). If you knew where all the trails are, you'd not have such a great time in the rough. Plus, the search for the cache in the last 10-20 feet is almost half the fun.

Might I suggest you try getting lost in the wilds of Australia, particularly a bit with no civilization within a week's walk (and people do that kind of trek in Australia quite regularly). I *have* been lost (briefly) when bushwalking back in school camp (the moronic older teenagers who were supposed to be guiding us couldn't read a friggin' map), and all thoughts of the joys of the wild were lost in annoyance, concern that we might not make it back before dark and endure a cold night out, and just plain sore legs from walking twice as far as we otherwise would have.

If you want to turn your GPS off and enjoy being "lost", that's fine. I have a mobile phone which stays turned off a fair bit, as well. But modern technology allows us a far greater safety margin to enjoy the beauty of the wilderness, and I have no time for luddites who needlessly take risks for dubious aesthetic gains.

Using G7ToWin [home.net] you can upload/download routes, waypoints, etc with your eTrex (if you have the data cable). Great little program. It doesn't let you draw on a map but I have no doubt that with a little bit of elbow grease and a product like MapPoint (otherwise known as Streets and Trips) you could achieve it. The only nuisance is that it requires that the eTrex be in a different serial data mode than MapPoint forcing me to switch it to jump between them (I considered making a virtual serial port that would automatically convert from a real serial port and both MapPoint and G7ToWin could talk to the virtual serial port, but after a quick look at the Win2000 DDK determined that it wasn't something that was worth dedicating that much time to).

I got one of those as well and it is an amazing device (not to mention being amazingly accurate). To be honest though right after getting my E-Trex I wished I'd gotten the eTrex Venture [garmin.com]. Given that it includes the PC cable (which I paid extra for) it is only marginally more expensive than the standard Etrex, but it also has a city database, 1MB of memory, and 160 x 288 resolution versus 64 x 128 for the standard Etrex...well I regretted getting the basic Etrex. You can do a compare at http://www.garmin.com/cgi-bin/compare/outdoor [garmin.com].

If ya look at Ed's site and what it does, it seems like it might be a real copyright infringement. The Geocaching site does say Copyright on each page that Ed gets information from and it also says "To use the services of geocaching.com you must agree to..." and the agreement contains the copyright as well.
I know we all love to rebel against copyright of any type, but this really does seem like a fair, and legit request for the geocaching.com guy to make.

Good point. I hike w/map & compass, and know how to use them, so I've never bothered to cough up the extra $$$ for a GPS. Your comment about zero visibility is the first time anyone's given me a reason to change my mind and consider GPS.

Yeah, I was up on Mt. Wilcox last year alone. Wilcox is a fairly insignifigant mountain in the rockies direcly across from the Athabasca Glacier on the Jasper/Banff border. I had my compass and map, but not an altimiter or GPS at the time. I had a pack full of gear otherwise. I was the first person on the mountain last year without ice tools (according to the logbook on top) and six twits literally in shorts, t-shirts and running shoes followed my post-holes through the snow to the top.

I was watching the weather for the 45 min that I was on the top, very afraid of a lenticular cloud or something else, because one misstep on the way down and, well, you are glissading for about 2km before you hit bottom... Having a GPS in that condition probably would have been a much smarter move, because if visibility dropped, and I lost my post holes in the snow... even with my full north-face suit on I probably would have been in very serious trouble, getting down would have been a matter of luck more than skill. At that snow level, you had about a 10 ft wide area that was safe to walk, this stretched for over 300 M across the spine of the mountian. Stepping outside that area would have been... bad...

The irony to this situation was the lecture that the six people gave me about hiking alone...

Posted to Slashdot, becomes a story, site gets slashdotted now headline reads:
Buxley's GPS Geocache Maps Online, Now OffThe this reporter feels that the original headline shall be appropriate in about 24 hours from now, when the/. effect wears off.

As a very experience outdoorsman I must disagree with the idea of "casting off" GPS systems. While I do not use them all the time, they have proven invaluable on the numerous Search and Rescue missions I have been on. (With the exception of the first generation Magellans, which did not work worth a damn...)

I am familiar with using a compass and altimiter for navigation in zero visibility, however, when mountain climbing in the rockies in Banff and Jasper, if you drop to zero vis (which can happen from blue sky to zero in about 5 min or less!) you will find out just how badly you want your GPS.

I have no problem with running out and "getting lost". I do it alot, but I also bring the gear along with me for getting found again. Where I live, if you were to do this on a regular basis with out the required skills, I would be one of the "Rescuers" looking for your body. Yes I said body. Out here, if you are not prepared, and the weather changes... you are probably dead. (Yet I constantly see idiots on top of the Columbia Icefields with shorts, t-shirt, and running shoes. And *NO* other gear....)

So old style troll (which you appear to be) your idea of casting off technology is actually a good one *IF* you have the skills to back it up. I have camped out on Islands with nothing by my clothes and a knife (with a backup kit for emergencys which I have not used -yet-.) I think you give good advice, cast off the tech, just be certain you know what you are doing when you do, and that in the area you choose to do it in won't kill you if you screw up.

You mean like "Dungeons and Dragons". Going commercial had interesting effects. It made the playing a lot less creative, but a lot more popular. I still don't consider that there was any legal justification for giving that name to TSR, when it was common public usage, but just like the enclosure acts, if the populace being acted against doesn't have significant muscle, the laws will just get ignored.

OTOH, it was also interesting to see it as an example of standardization. It allowed it to be more possible for characters to transfer from one game setting to another. But it was still unprincipled claim jumping that was backed by the government only because the claimjumpers had a lot more money/power/organization than those jumped upon.

I'm sure that you can think of other examples, but this is to note that it's not only in large and significant cases that this principle applies.

The copyright in the cache data, if any, is restricted to the selection and arrangment of the data. The facts themselves can not be copyrighted.

Feist says that an alphabetical listing of phone numbers carries no copyright protection. The implication is that an alphabetical arrangement is not sufficient original expression to gain copyright protection and a listing of all phone numbers (excluding those who ask to be unlisted) carries no copyright for selection. By analogy, I suspect that a chronological arrangement or any other type of arrangement sugegsted by the facts themselves would not qualify for copyright protection.

Since I can't get to the site I'm going to have to assume that what it is is a bunch of pages that give away all the locations of the things people hide/find on geocaching.com. It really sounds to me like this guy's whole site is dedicated to ruining the fun of geocaching. While I don't think you can (or should be able to) copyright or patent a GPS coordinate, this guy's site is a pretty crummy thing to do. Why ruin it for everybody? And what other recourse would Geocaching have than to sue him? I have to side with Geo in this case.

Like I said, I am working on the assumption that this site is dedicated to giving away the "answers" to the challenges on geocaching.com since I can't get to the site. If this is not correct, please explain.

Would it be possible to start a Free database of GPS coordinates? I was thinking of storing locations and other info in a Postgresql table. If would be really great to have a map database as well. I'm not really sure what the storage requirements would be. I am willing to write code and play.

Brilliant troll, as usual. However, let me respond as if you believed what you say.

Wonder comes not from being lost, as you seem to imply, but in discovering where you are, where you are going, and what you are looking for. Certainly, there is a certain romance in losing yourself in the wilds (of America, of the mind, or what have you), but the true excitement comes from finding your way - or the way of another. And this is where the beauty of geocaching lies; someone else has hidden a treasure Out There Somewhere, and it is up to you to put on their shoes, put yourself in their head, and walk the path that they walked themselves. Sure, there's a difference between taking a stroll through the woods and following a map, but each of these things is a special treat - there's no reason to pick one to the exclusion of all the rest. Enjoy it all! Just because you're using a GPS, or a compass, or what have you, doesn't make it any less fun...

The location of the "treasure chests" isn't necessarily public information, and he's definitely using a private database to get his information. While I think Jeremy's being a little over the top on the matter, the issue's been discussed there before and from what I recall (it's been a while since I've been there as I don't have time to go do the real world searches), he had acceptable reasons for trying to contain the data to one location. In any case, all this guy needs to do is start his own gps treasure hunt site and he can map those locations to his heart's content.

I got a Garmin Emap [garmin.com]. I've taken it everywhere with me. The main difference is that it does mapping. (though now the more expensive etrex legend units do too)

It's about the same size and runs on 2 AA batteries. It has a backlight for nighttime use (do all of them have this?)

It has a map of all the major roads in the wester hemisphere built in, but it's expandable with the mapsource CD and it's flash memory slot (unfortunately proprietary - though it IS small).

I got it for $195 a long time ago at www.tvnav.com [tvnav.com]. It's $190 now.

The guy who runs the site also runs a mailing list that's pretty informative. Whenever a firmware or software update comes out, he usually posts a message.

The only downside is that it doesn't do any sort of routing, and neither does the $125 Metroguide Mapsource software - which sucks since that $19 AAA map software at fry's does it pretty easily. You can also get topo maps.

Last plane flight I took it on registered 620 mph (or was it 650?) at 41,000 feet.

Ok, it's a little silly, but we call it geolunching (or geomunching). We just give each other GPS coordinates for friday lunches.

And you know, those "what do you want to eat?" indecisive questions never come up. You have no idea what you'll encounter at the end.

I've been toying with the idea of putting waypoints into the scheme somehow. Something like "go to this point and find a sign with a phone number. Put a decimal place in front of it. Add that number +.34567 to your N position and that number +.01024 to your W position and that's the final destination.".

If your gps does mapping, it's more fun to keep the destination way off the map and go by the direction of travel arrow.

Meanwhile I'll have the skills to navigate without being reliant an a GPS, so that when it rains and your GPS shorts out(seen that happen) or your battery runs flat (seen that several times), I can sit & laugh as you wonder round in circles.

Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against GPS systems, but anybody out walking should be able to navigate proficiently by several methods. I've seen people who had the same problem when they cracked their compass, had no idea how to orientate a map without it...

I own geocache.org which I think I obtained before Jeremy started his site. I made some of the inital maps with locations. His inital source of data came from some where else and I'm going to send a message off to their maintainers to pull the use of it.

That database started out as a community effort, and the database should stay that way.

Reminds me of the CDDB. While not exactly the same, they both started as community efforts, and both turned into commercial efforts with legal strife trying to protect what they consider their territory.

What makes these people think that there's only room for one player in their respective areas? It is frustrating trying to explain to someone that competition is a good thing for them!

if you drop to zero vis (which can happen from blue sky to zero in about 5 min or less!) you will find out just how badly you want your GPS.

Good point. I hike w/map & compass, and know how to use them, so I've never bothered to cough up the extra $$$ for a GPS. Your comment about zero visibility is the first time anyone's given me a reason to change my mind and consider GPS.

I wonder how long until this sort of thing just degenerates into a bunch of teenagers just taking everything from the cache.

Well, as long as no more stories about it are posted on Slashdot, there shouldn't be a problem, but if there are, the caches will probably all be destroyed with flame throwers. Let's hope those ammo cans can stand up to the punishment!

Mononoke (my nickname on www.geocaching.com)

"What happens when an irrefutable argument meets an immovable opinion?"

Well, I can't find an appropriate case description online, but I remember hearing of a ruling that the content of phonebooks can't be copyrighted - or lists of addresses, or other similar compilations of public information. A particular presentation might be copyrighted, but the information within, is not.

Seems like the GPS coordinates would definitely be covered under the "list of addresses" type of precedent.

A similar thing happened to me regarding copyrights. I had a historical website that detailed a particular civil war units exploits across the Northeast. Several years before my site was published a lawyer got ahold of a copy of a manuscript that he had reprinted. Being he is a lawyer he wrote up everything he required to have the copyright for that manuscript put into his name. Move forward now to when I build my site. I went through a Civil War database to find out who was killed or wounded in a particular battle and where/when this battle took place. Being that the information was also in this manuscript (different format I might add) this lawyer threatened me several times with a lawsuit. One of his threats was " I am a high priced lawyer and you 'can't afford to litigate this'"
So how is it our legal system can allow such obvious wrongs to go to the ones with the most money?
How can a person "OWN" history or GPS locations for that matter.
GO figure. Hope mr Adams doesnt sue me for my nick... I bet where he is hes awefully worried.

You know, why don't we just do away with all technology as it is? I mean, it all makes life easier, and so much of it explains the mysteries of our world, leaving nothing for the curious. I mean, come on, I wanted to discover pennicillin, but no, somebody else has to go and discover it, and then proceed to make it available to the rest of the world! That pisses me off to no end! Down with technology! It's making life so much more boring!

Seriously though, do you really think we're so badly off with GPS's? If you don't like them, don't use them. But don't decry them as evil just because you like getting lost:)

I have always thought that a public "geocache record" should have more than just the coordinates, but also a freshness date and an two keys which authorizes people to adjust the record.

coordinates of cache are public

freshness date of cache are public

cache creator has a hidden control key code

cache itself has a freshness key code inside

Each visitor to the cache can find contained within a "freshness key code." They can visit the website and use that code to "freshen" the record. Caches can then be auto-retracted from the website (not deleted) if it gets to be too unfresh. Fresher or semi-fresh caches may also appeal to other visitors according to their tastes, so they can query the database to find better caches.

The creator of the cache can retract the cache entirely by using the access code.

Retracting a cache doesn't stop someone from using ancient records. The traffic would fade out, however, if the records clearly show that they were only current as of 2001. Only the hardcore seekers would go for obviously stale caches, because the chances are, the owner took the stale cache bucket away from the site.

The rest is culture: if the websites impress upon people that it's not kosher to tramp off to find a cache that's more than a year stale, such trespassing or fruitless trips would be much more rare.

Even going to www.brillig.com [brillig.com] gives you a 500 Server ErrorHmm...Even with Verio's bronze package [verio.com] (where the site looks like it's hosted on), you get 5 gig's of monthly data transfer...burning the bandwidth fast...
- grunby

The site was fairly responsive when I first accessed it, but now I can't even find any caches to search for in my area. Someone should alert sites that they are about to be hit hard when posting a message in this forum.:-)

I share a somewhat similar interest - Cold War bunkers, old railway tunnels and subterranea. The main UK group, Subterranea Brittanica [subbrit.org.uk], has many archives of interesting locations, but suffers this same problem of how much to disclose.

For Xmas, a friend gave me a small keyring torch (flashlight) - an extremely bright white LED torch.

I was delighted with this. I (probably my friend too) still remember saving up (a considerable sum!) to buy my very first red LED (a TIL209, of course), when I was a kid. I know just why it's difficult to make white LEDs [nichia.co.jp], either way, and I'm still amazed even by blue ones. Like most children, I always wanted a torch for Xmas. I had torches - they didn't work very well. Dull orange glow, and a short life from their leaking batteries. As a very special present (I'd been in hospital) my parents once gave me a keyring torch just like my new one - a feeble glimmer that lasted no time at all, but I thought it was wonderful.

Now my son (6 years old) plays with this LED torch too. To him it's just a torch, and why shouldn't a torch be tiny, pure bright white light, and have seemingly inexhaustible batteries ?

This dispute seems to encapsulate a lot of what's wrong with America these days. 8-(

Why does anyone need an "Official Geocaching Site" ? Get off your fat SUV-encased butts, get out there and be your own "official" leagues and teams. You don't need some corporate Disney-wannabee telling you how to enjoy yourselves!

Geocaching needs a minimum of two people, some cheap tech, and a flyposted wall poster to communicate between them (oh, and several billions of technology funded by those nice people at the military-industrial complex). You don't need an "official" site, a hierarchy, a league, or a figurehead chairman (especially not a self-appointed one).

Ignore geocaching.com. Don't boycott it, that's itself too organised, just go and do something else instead. There's a whole internet to play with (thanks again to those helpful mil-ind people) - read PhilG's [www.photo.nettargetblank] book [amazon.com], and build your own geocaching list server.

What is it with America, "Land of the Free", that can't even fix itself lunch these days without a degree of regimentation and standardised prole-feeding-centres that would put North Korea to shame ? Did you throw off the yoke of colonial British Redcoats, just so that you could be fed by uniformed redshirts ?

Secondly, the map site is legally screwed. He's not providing map references, he's providing direct references to someone else's collection of information. As any amount of legal precedent has shown, a collected work like this is material protected by copyright (and rightly so).

If this map site just listed links to locations, links as DCMI points [dublincore.org] or to the Getty Thesaurus [getty.edu], then there would be no problem -- but that's not what it's doing.

I don't believe that SA is completely gone. It's been suspended indefinately. If there were WWIII, or if the DOD changed their mind, they would turn it back on again. There's still a separate signal for military and civilian units I think.

Even surveyors wouldn't want the Ruskis to use our satellites for their smart bombs.

by mikethegeek on 19:22 Tuesday 05 June 2001 EST
Is that we've degenerated as a civilization to the point that it can even be a QUESTION that such an idiotic, frivilous legal claim could even MAKE it to a court!
How the hell can a commercial entity "copyright" coordinates? Hell, they don't even OWN the places!
What we need are laws that punish those who FILE frivilous suits, and those who THREATEN frivilous suits. These days, the risk of being sued is so great, and
the damage that can be caused by such suits are so great, why should these THREATS be treated any differently than threatening to break someone's leg?
Unfortunately, since laws are written by congressmen (who are mostly lawyers), or MORE frequently, by special interests (the American Trial Lawyers, the
unprincipled cartel of ambulance chasing plantiff's lawyers is one of the MOST powerful), I don't see it happening.
Does this post remind anyone else of Zippy and his [comic strip|fortunes]?

Anyone can be lost usimng a GPS unit. The essential skill, after all, is reading the map - and remembering to use fresh batteries.
jwd
--
The only thing more dangerous to liberty than a politician is two politicians.

From want I remember, the sites blamed for deep linking where somehow trying to hide the true authorship of the target page and make it appear as their own. Such ruling took into consideration that with most browser, you cannot readily see the url of a page loaded by a framing link.

Also were spiked those that framed other news sites with their own adds. I can see that, as soon as the jude considered the simutanous display of the composite "their news + your adds" as a new derivative work, he would strike down on it as non fair-use.

Just be sure your decimal notation is correct. I'd hate to see a trip to the Olive Garden become a trip to "Hanson Live at the Paramount" because a 4 got turned into a 5 and all.-------------------------------------------- ------

This is about "database copyright". There is no such thing in U.S. law. But bills to create it have been introduced in previous years. [e-businessworld.com] It's something to keep watching for in Congress. Generally, the search engine companies are against it, so there's a significant lobby on the other side.

Under current law, you can't copyright a "collection of facts", although you can copyright a presented arrangement of them. In the days of printed reference books, that was enough to discourage running off copies of reference books; you'd have to re-typeset, as a minimum. Today, when you pick up some big collection of data, you typically process it and present it in a different way, and that's legal. There are companies that don't like this. So far, they've mostly lost.

...is such a cool idea. I had never heard of it (perhaps there are old/. posts). Now I finally have a reason to get a GPS unit. This is a fun way to get to see cool locations.

However, I wonder how long until this sort of thing just degenerates into a bunch of teenagers just taking everything from the cache. I think the only way for this to continue is to make it something involving many landmarks like orienteering exercises. Perhaps more riddles as well. The Geocaching FAQ reccommends offsets too, something involving needing to visit the spot..ie go west as many seconds of longitude as there are stripes on the building, etc.

...so I can see what the problem is. There have been conflicting rulings in the past on about linking to deeply located content, but that seems to be what the Buxley's site is doing. When you click on their map, it brings you to the geocaching.com site with that relevant information. If had gathered the info with web spiders for example, he would be in a much better position. He is providing a portal giving direct links to content (kind of like Slashdot with news articles).

Wow, i *love* my eTrex! I mostly use it for driving around, and i've been able to find some great shortcuts.

Cool bonus: "open source", roll-your-own accessories for it. Check out pfranc.com [pfranc.com] -- this guy will send you adapters that he presses in his home plastic molding system on the honor system. You can then use the adapters to make serial cables for half the cost of the retail version. He calls it the first "sharehardware" project.

geocaching.com -can- easily remove the problem site
themselves, and the data will just be gone.
They did this, after the first legal threat, geocaching.com would return random coordinates to Buxley's site. Deep linking is not the issue, it was just Jeremy Irish didn't want anyone using "his" data, period.

If you don't want to know where you are, turn it off! If you want to make a waypoint at an area you want to return, turn it back on. If you get lost use it, otherwise ramble like usual! I think the capability to return to the exact same spot you marked years earlier adds a new dimension to the outdoors.

I've been geocaching sonce the first/. story and have been following these disputes for quite awhile. Here's the story

Geocaching(which is now trademarked by geocaching.com), or gps stashing, or whatever you want to call it was born on a newsgroup, sites started springing up listing stash information. Geocaching.com came into the scene and became THE geocaching site for a few reasons, first and foremost it was much slicker than any other cache site, second because there was quite a media blitz. Now I don't want to tarnish the excellent work Jeremy Irish on geocaching.com, but some of the things he has done really make me (and a few others, though not a majority) really angry. He formed a business to own the site, which should have raised a few eyebrows, but people were too busy mutually masturbating at what a great site geocaching.com was.

Orignally most geocaching discussion happened on an egroup mailing list called gpsstash. Every month or two someone would ask for a downloadable list of waypoints. The request would get ignored most of the time, other times they would get brushed off by Jeremy saying that it would allow people to maintain their own copy of the info and it might go stale. In response, someone wrote a perl script to slurp info off of the site (but did not distribute it) and Jeremy responded that any attempt to slurp data off of the site would be met with legal action. Well, people continued to ask for the feature but nothing happened.

Jeremy also declared the original mailing list dead, and started hosting his own list (with alot less features, I might add.) Once again, nobody cared. Another revealing incident happened when somebody (not Buxley) made a graphic map of his state locations of stashes on it. Immediately Jeremy unveiled HIS maps.

Buxley was evidently the first to create a fully functional wold-wide map site, and then one day Jeremy decides to threaten legal action against it. FINALLY people realize that Jeremy's absolute control is a Bad ThingTM, and come out of the woodwork to complain about it. After much discussion between all parties involved Jeremy has said that he will make info available on certain caches on an opt-in basis. His excuse for not doing it before was that people may end up with stale data if there isn't a central distribution point. I have suggested that he release it under the Open Directory License [dmoz.org], which maintains a central distribution site, and prohibits commercial use, but my post has been ignored.

To summarize, geocaching.com is a great site, but its administrator doesn't play well with others and want's to run the whole show.

I was going to take the time to agree with this, but I'm going pack instead. Someone just copyrighted my house's location, so now I have to either move the house or get out.

I'm going to try to prove in court that the exact location they copyrighted is actually my garbage cans, so it's their job to take out the garbage from now on. Maybe if I'm lucky I'll win. But until then, bye!

Ed Hall's site doesn't give away the locations, it's just an easy-to-navigate series of maps which lead you to entries on geocaching.com. The site starts out with a US map, you zoom into a state and see a bunch of "thumbtacks" representing cache locations. Click a thumbtack and you end up at geocaching.com's description of the cache.

I think geocaching.com is probably miffed they didn't come up with (or implement) the idea first. Worst case scenario is that Ed's site will have to make clear that when you click a thumbtack, you're leaving his site and heading to geocaching.com.

Compare that with the Magellan GPS 315. For about the same money you get much more ability to preload tracks from TOPO GPS maps. Just draw where you want to go on the map, print it for reference and upload the track to the GPS. With the Datasend Software, thousands of points of interest are uploadable.

If you come around my place with GPS, I'll have you charged with "Interfering with a religion" like $cientology did.

What religion? Umm, I told Census Canada that I was a Jedi. That's it. Better not mess with the Jedi buster! We have the Force and Tom Cruise missles too! (It's too bad that most judges are related to Jabba the Hutt, otherwise: "These aren't the patents you are looking for, move along")

But seriously, didn't the phone companies vs people who put directories on CD settle that you can't copyright the data in a list?

Now, I have a set of location data which I acquired using basic trigonometry and some near-prehistoric equipment known as compass and tape. If any of those data equate to that acquired by someone's copy-righted GPS data, where do I stand?

Obviously (well, at least to me), the data is, if you like, a basic truth which may be divined in all manner of ways and cannot be copyrighted purely because of the way in which it was acquired.

If such data was copyrightable, perhaps the copyright should belong to the GPS receiver manufacturer, and we could let Garmin and Magellan, etc. fight over who actually owns it... 8-)

Of course, my opinion is worth about as much as your own and normal caveats apply.

The geocaching.com webmaster got his initial (I SAY INITIAL) database from me.. When I gave it to him, it contained perhaps around 100 locations.. Now it's over 2000... I was writing HTML in a friggin text editor, and it got tedious to maintain, so I asked geocaching.com to take it over..
You can take mine, I have no problem with that, never did... It's still at http://www.triax.com/~yngwie/oldlist.html
And it's friggin older than hell!
The original Geocaching website was http://www.triax.com/~yngwie/gps.html
You can easily see the difference..

"Degeneration" implies that it used to be worse. It wasn't. Frivolous lawsuits, lobbyists, influence peddling, and all that are nothing new. The same thing used to happen in Rome, Bagdad, Jerusalem, or Peking. You used to lose liberty, limb, or life if you lost. Now you usually just lose your shirt."

I'll grant you that this sort of thing has probably always happened.

However, as recently as 10-15 years ago, the number of these stupid suits was less than today. 20-30 years ago you hardly heard of such a thing.

The difference is, 10+ years ago, there used to be a lot more COMMON SENSE in the courts. Judges felt that it was part of their duty to reject out of hand obviously stupid and unreasonable claims.

Unfortunately, the last 5-10 years have seen a proliferation of stipid IP law that actually DOES threaten to make Americans slaves to commercial entites, and with the laws, more law suits.

The lawsuit industry in the last few years particularly has become a growth industry. Judges are increasingly nothing more than political hacks at best, delusional Napoleon-wannabes at worst.

What we need is a breakout of common sense. However, I'm increasingly of the opinion that common sense is misnamed because is not very common.

This claim is SO stupid as to defy all reason. But I bet there is some idiot judge who would hear it, thus costing the defendant a lot of money, when they'd done NOTHING wrong.

That is why judges NEED to be more a LOT more socially responsible than they are today, not accepting such obviously (to any person with a pulse who isn't a plantiff's lawyer or "judge" Kaplan who is breating and has a pulse) IDIOTIC claims. The judge is the first line of defense in preventing frivilous lawsuits.

Cases such as this are the stort that ruin the dignity and integrity OF the court. Maybe the black-robed wannabe Napoleons should think of that. If you ever read over some of the things the Bar actually REQUIRES of attorneys to be members, BRINGING such suits actually DOES merit disbarment! But I bet today it would never happen.

Sooner or later, when enough people have been sued (seems to me odds are almost every citizen is going to be sued by someone sooner or later), the public is going to demand reform in the courts, and it's not going to go well for the judges and lawyers. So they better start policing themselves now.

Is that we've degenerated as a civilization to the point that it can even be a QUESTION that such an idiotic, frivilous legal claim could even MAKE it to a court!

How the hell can a commercial entity "copyright" coordinates? Hell, they don't even OWN the places!

What we need are laws that punish those who FILE frivilous suits, and those who THREATEN frivilous suits. These days, the risk of being sued is so great, and the damage that can be caused by such suits are so great, why should these THREATS be treated any differently than threatening to break someone's leg?

Unfortunately, since laws are written by congressmen (who are mostly lawyers), or MORE frequently, by special interests (the American Trial Lawyers, the unprincipled cartel of ambulance chasing plantiff's lawyers is one of the MOST powerful), I don't see it happening.

A few years ago a Norwegian telecom engineer was arrested in Russia for espionage. He was on an assignment to measure accurate locations to put up cellular locations, and he must somehow have failed to get some permits.

The exact locations of military installations (even baracks used to house recruits) are considered sensitive information. (The weird thing is that all the sites that are considered "secret" have big signs posted that photography is illegal, something I am sure the _real_ spys are grateful for.

I'd think geo caches might face worse opponents than the evil corporate world. The army, navy, air force, CIA, KGB, GRU, NSA, FBI, and any other secret and conventional military organisation in any county in the world are more likely to cause some headache here.

well almost but not quite. what you are referring to is a "sweat of the brow" doctrine that they used to use to try and attempt to protect compilations of data.
It was shot down by the Supreme Court and "effort" alone is not enough to copyright.
It was in response to the Rurual Telephone Co. vs. Feist Publications.